Fast Heart key to silencing mighty Roar

Michael Lynch

PACE, mobility, a high pressing game, patience, ball retention and the fitness to match Brisbane's work rate are the ingredients necessary to disrupt the title favourite and pull off a shock victory at Suncorp Stadium tonight, according to Melbourne Heart coach John van 't Schip.

Brisbane Roar, the defending A-League champion, had its record-setting 36-game unbeaten run come to an end last weekend when Sydney defeated it for the first time in 15 months.

Van 't Schip knows it is a tall order to go to a ground where his side was humbled 4-0 last season and inflict a second successive defeat on Ange Postecoglou's team. But he insists that if Heart sticks to the fundamentals of an uptempo style, then an upset is not impossible.

One thing the Victorian side will not do is park the bus and try to defend for 90 minutes. Melbourne Victory held out for an hour against Brisbane by packing its defence, but there were special circumstances in that 2-2 draw at Etihad Stadium as it had been reduced to nine men. Wellington Phoenix showed that surrendering the initiative could work when it travelled to Suncorp and defended in depth, grabbed a goal and held on for a draw in a match the Roar dominated.

But such tactics do not impress the Dutchman.

''I don't believe in defending. I don't believe that Wellington went up there only to defend … they had one or two chances and they scored. But that game could easily have gone 8-1 to Brisbane. They hit the bar, they shot against players who they didn't even know were standing in the way,'' van 't Schip said yesterday.

Advertisement

''We are not going to change for one game, to lay in front of the goal and hope that they don't score. I don't think that's the right approach … it is not going to work.''

What will work is a commitment to match the hard running of Brisbane, particularly the champion's mobility in midfield and on the flanks, where Shane Stefanutto and Ivan Franjic, the full-backs, maraud to such good effect.

So van 't Schip has settled for the same squad which scrambled to a 1-0 win over Wellington last week, even though it didn't play that well. He is likely to stick to the same starting line-up, with the speedy Jonatan Germano employed as a defensive midfielder alongside the highly mobile Fred and Matt Thompson.

Wayne Shroj, for whom speed of thought is not matched by fleetness of foot, is the main victim of this decision. Normally a first-choice sitting midfielder, Shroj is available after serving a one-match ban last weekend, but he has been left in Melbourne, along with the injured Simon Colosimo and Alex Terra and the out-of-favour Kristian Sarkies (who has recovered from injury) and David Williams. ''With the players we have, and the players that Brisbane have, we need different kinds of players in our midfield. Mobility is something that we look for,'' van 't Schip said.

Brisbane, he believes, is beatable if it can be hustled out of possession in the transition, as there is then space behind the back four which can be utilised by quick-breaking midfielders.

''High pressing is what we always try to do. Brisbane is used to that. They want to play out from the back, and they are not going to change that. It's up to us to make it hard for them. When we have the ball, or when we recover it in our half, we have to look for our chances to hurt them,'' he said. ''Retaining possession is important and we have to be more patient … If you play forward or try to play the killer pass too early, then the chance that we lose the ball is big.

''If a striker can hold the ball up for a second or two even longer, then all the players can make five to 10 metres more pushing up.''